Malawi Parliament starts mid-term budget review meeting today

The Malawi Parliament starts meeting today for the mid-term budget review in Lilongwe.

Speaker of the National Assembly Richard Msowoya says all Cabinet Ministers, deputy ministers and members of parliament are summoned to attend the meeting.

The meeting runs up to March 2.

Parliament starts meeting today.

However, the maizegate scandal is expect to be hot on the agenda with lawmakers indicating they want President Peter Mutharika to appear before the house for questioning.

The scandal has made revelation of unscrupulous deals that saw Admarc buying the now suspicious 100000 metric tonnes of maize from Zambia some weeks ago.

Leaked documents showed that Admarc used a private Zambian company to buy 100,000 metric tons of maize something which was expensive than if the deal were government to government.

According to figures seen in documents, Admarc paid $34.5 million (about K26 billion) for the maize, which is $13 million (about K9.5 billion) more than the $21.5 million (about K15 billion) it could have paid had it bought the maize from Zambian Government.

But Admarc insisted that it bought the staple grain from Zambia Cooperative Federation (ZCF), a government agency.

Malawi government obtained a loan of K26 billion from the Eastern and Southern African Development Bank (PTA Bank) to purchase 100,000 metric tons of maize from government of Zambia through ZCF.